artsy-fartsy

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

adj. Vulgar Pretentiously or affectedly artistic.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

adj. A frivolous or dismissive description of someone or something that is artistic or pretentiously artistic.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Examples

It's perfectly ok with me if Jonathan Yardley has philistine tastes in fiction, but one would swear that he has been given prominence in the Washington Post for all these years because he represents the similar philistine tastes of most of those who write for and edit American newspapers, and can be counted on to give those artsy-fartsy novelists (the "literati" more generally) a good smack in the face every once in a while.

"Analytic" is of course a nice term to be used whenever it's necessary to distinguish between mere emotional and instinctual artists and real thinkers -- the intellectually rigorous (and properly credentialed) "scholars" who can cut through all the artsy-fartsy rigamarole favored by the "creative" types and let us know what all cultural activites are finally really about.

Admittedly, political avoidance of the arts is now an established, cross-party tradition, following New Labour's brutish assumption that, as Chris Smith told the Guardian's Charlotte Higgins, culture was "too artsy-fartsy" for the British public to deal with.

I personally don't plan on missing a single red carpet that she graces or destroys, not one episode or premiere party for HBO's Boardwalk Empire, or any cheesy, self-produced, artsy-fartsy sex tape that she releases did I mention there's a faux-sex tape?